Southern Poverty Law Center Promotes Y2K Race War

Christian Identity Blamed for Uniting Right Wing Extremists

On June 16th the Southern Poverty Law
Center issued a stark warning of an impending race war. In a
statement carried by Reuters news service spokesman Mark Potok, it
was declared that some "hate groups" believe that Biblical Armageddon
will be fought in the year 2000 by white Christians against blacks
and Jews.(1) Potok's remarks coincided with the release of a SPLC
Intelligence Project report which indicated that even though the
number of such groups has fallen off recently, a "leaner, harder
Patriot movement ... hardened in the forge of the Christian Identity
religion has emerged, producing terrorist conspiracies and crimes on
a level not seen in decades." (2)

In his customary fashion, Mark Potok
crudely lashed out against the religious sect of Christian Identity.
"You don't hate your cow, but you sure as hell don't sleep with it,"
he told Reuters, referring to the ideal of racial separation held by
many Identity believers. "It [Christian Identity] is incredibly
anti-Semitic, and it is racist because [members believe] blacks are
not human," he said. Potok failed to explain the SPLC's position that
the prenatal human is not human either. (3)

The Southern Poverty Law Center is again
beating the war drum of racist agitation, evidently alarmed at the
declining number of Patriot type groups included in its catalog of
stigmatization. After the decline of the Ku Klux Klan the Patriot
movement became the bogeyman used by the SPLC to convince
contributors that they should continue sending in large checks. Add
one measure of Christian Identity with some sensational sound bite
and you have a "leaner, harder Patriot" threat to sell -- another
illusion that remains the sole product of the "hate industrial
complex." These subversive tactics have successfully netted the SPLC
a large endowment worth many millions of tax-free dollars.

As the Southern Poverty Law Center
profiteered on the Oklahoma City bombing and pumped the militia threat
for all it could gain from it, a courageous member of that
organization's leadership council protested to Morris Dees, SPLC
director and founder, in a letter that is by now well known in Patriot
circles. In that letter he stated:

I have, until recently, been a contributing member to
SPLC for several years, and until recently, I have been proud of that
association... But rather than seek justice for those so abused, the
Center has chosen to exploit sensationalist journalism, to which the
SPLC itself has contributed heavily, inducing largely irrational
fears to fight against the so-called "Patriot Movement" and its
related "Militias". In the SPLC campaign, this heterogeneous group is
painted with broad strokes in threatening ways which are very unfair
to the great majority of those in the movement... If we in the SPLC
are truly concerned with the threat presented by these groups, we
should be looking for ways to constructively address their legitimate
concerns, rather than seek to blindly discredit and destroy the
entire movement. -- excerpts from
a
letter by David H. Stern, M.D. dated May 8, 1996.

Evidently, Dr. Stern's lucid appeal was
ignored by the SPLC, which has continued its hate-mongering and
sensationalist smear campaign against non-conformist groups. The SPLC
pays a good salary to a scurrilous loose cannon like Mark Potok who
disparages and ridicules these groups, confirming their suspicions
and widening the social divide. The SPLC has perfected the Orwellian
example of perpetuating the curse from which they claim to be saving
us.

The Southern Poverty Law Center was
founded by Morris Dees in 1971 with the stated purpose of seeking
justice for poor Southerners, including victims of government abuse.
As time went on, it became evident to many that the SPLC was
motivated by a political agenda. Critics claim that the SPLC is
hostile to white, middle American values and Christianity while
countenancing with their silence the draconian abuses of the federal
government. Their bias in this regard has caused Southern
conservatives and others to accuse the SPLC of climbing into bed with
the federal government and its constituents. The SPLC's evident
duplicity has fostered an atmosphere of fear, hatred and division.
This is a result, some claim, of their effort to enrich their
organization and implement the agenda of their financial and
ideological sponsors.

One newspaper editor said of Morris Dees:

Voluminous records and testimony reveal that
everything Dees purports to despise... HE IS! And now, he is being
judged by his own judgments. His Southern Poverty Law Center is not
Southern, is a long way from the Poverty bracket and has nothing to
do (really) with Law. In reality his organization is better
identified as the Center of Hate. (4)

The editor went on to cite figures
reported in the Montgomery Advertiser which revealed that the
Southern Poverty Law Center raised $4.2 million in donations per
lawsuit filed in the five years preceding December 28, 1994, a
scandalous amount of money that reveals how profitable hate can be.
This same source revealed the presence of racism within the hallowed
halls of the Center itself, as one black intern reported being
nicknamed "little girl" by her white supervisor who also told her
they "don't need black people telling them how to handle black
issues." Other interns said that the Center was run like a
"plantation." (4)

Gathering Storm: SPLC Draws Bead on Religious Sect

The SPLC's June 16th media blitz was a
continuation of their sordid tradition, with a sharpening focus on
the Christian Identity religious sect which they predict will provide
the ideological impetus for increased terrorist activity in the
future. The Center's Intelligence Report claims that:

Christian Identity is a "virulent, anti-Semitic and racist
theology".

Identity's "virulence and crimes" are "likely to continue to
grow."

Thirty years of organizing has produced a "hardened cadre" of
leaders.

Identity teaches that 2000 will be the date of a race war.

The "Internet" has strengthened this movement.

Terrorist conspiracies and crimes since the OKC bombing are
largely Identity driven.

Christian Identity groups are going "underground".

As it moves "underground" the Identity movement is growing
more violent than ever. (5)

Anyone who is familiar with Identity
beliefs knows that these assertions are a collection of broad
characterizations, innuendos and some outright lies. Identity
believers are not anti-Semitic and the SPLC knows this. Semites are
the descendants of Shem, and Identity believers claim to be the true
descendants of Shem, thus regarding themselves as very pro-Semite.
This doctrine has brought upon Identity believers the wrath of the
U.S. governing elite who want to destroy them for questioning
culturally ingrained dogma. God will be the ultimate judge of
Identity doctrines, but we should see that the SPLC's intensifying
hate speech against Identity believers is directed as much at their
fervently held beliefs as their guns.

"...and then they came for the Christian Identity believers..."

As repugnant as some may find Christian
Identity beliefs to be, all must recognize that Identity believers
are free to believe whatever they want without harassment and
persecution by the governing regime. Many Identity believers are
protesting the way they have been associated to bombings and
robberies because some accused of such acts hold beliefs that are
similar. We must be acutely aware of the media machine's concerted
effort to influence public sentiments against all Identity
believers, regardless of their differences, a campaign of slander and
misrepresentation that may well result in a Stalinist type purge of
all those holding unpopular ideology.

On April 24, CNN's Linda Pattillo filed a report in
which she warned, "The conspiratorial, anti-government doctrines of
Christian Identity are slowly working their way into some
fundamentalist churches, according to some observers." These
"observers", of course, are the Southern Poverty Law Center-led cabal
of hate groups that have mounted a concerted attack on Christianity.
"Hate" is spreading in the sense that the SPLC is expanding its
definition of it. Fundamentalist churches are the next target and, as
this culture war continues, more and more believers will find
themselves targets of slander and persecution. Their aim is to
destroy all true faith and conviction, rendering all people as timid
and helpless as barnyard animals.

Professed Christians everywhere are seeing
themselves under attack by the global cultural elite and many are
recognizing the unfolding struggle to be the Biblical Armageddon
foretold in scripture. In the tactics used by the federal government,
in the hypocrisy and lying subterfuge of the Southern Poverty Law
Center and kindred hate groups, in the arrogant oppression of
religious minorities by thought police, we may see the spirit of the
great Beast of the Apocalypse at work. It reads in the Apocalypse:

Then I saw heaven opened, and
behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and
True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war ... And I saw the
beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make
war against him who sits upon the horse and against his army. And the
beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who in its presence
had worked the signs by which he deceived those who had received the
mark of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were
thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulphur. And the
rest were slain by the sword of him who sits upon the horse, the
sword that issues from his mouth and all the birds were gorged with
their flesh. Revelation 19:11,19-21 RSV. (6)